Time for America to Declare Independence from BP!

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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

On July 4th, Americans are supposed to celebrate their independence. We may no longer have to worry about a greedy, distant monarch. But our country is still held in thrall to powerful interests that prize profit over individuals and their freedom—the energy industry comes to mind. As Jason Mark puts it at AlterNet:

“We’re in an abusive relationship and unable to leave our abuser. The plight of the people in Louisiana proves the point. Louisianans have been punched in the face by the hand that feeds them, and yet their biggest worry is that the oil and gas industry is going to walk out the door and leave them.”

Where’s the love?

It’s clear that BP, for instance, isn’t playing carefully with our country or its resources. At Mother Jones, David Corn relates the latest example of the company’s callousness. Its recovery plan had no stipulations about handling even a small storm like the one that stopped clean-up this week. It did, however, include plans to save sea life that hasn’t lived in the Gulf for millions of years. As Corn put it, the company was “prepared for walruses, not prepared for hurricanes.”

The biggest problem, of course, is that BP wasn’t prepared to handle a blow-out to begin with. The leak has gone on for so long that governmental officials are now taking unprecedented measures to protect the wildlife most vulnerable to its effects. Beth Buczynski reports at Care2 that official are going to dig up about 700 sea turtle nests on Alabama and Florida beaches that are at risk from the oil.

“Once the eggs have hatched, the young turtles will be released in darkness on Florida’s Atlantic beaches into oil-free water,” she writes. “Translocation of nests on this scale has never been attempted before.”

Halliburton

No matter how badly these companies treat us, it seems we can’t get rid of them. Take Halliburton. The company has latched its talons into the country and will not let go. It is second only to BP in shouldering responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon spill. As Jason Mark reports for the Earth Island Journal, just before the oil spill, Halliburton took over Boots & Coots, a company that deals with oil-well blowouts; that company now has a contract with BP to help with the relief well.

“Halliburton is essentially making money from causing the accident and then helping to repair it,” Mark writes. “Halliburton’s many-fingered tentacles is just the latest illustration of how powerful the company is.”

Wimpy Washington

Washington isn’t strong enough to fight back against that sort of corporate power. Over the past year, energy interests have whittled down the climate change legislation to a tepid half-step. Right now it looks most likely that a bill that passes will regulate only the utilities sector.

“We believe we have compromised significantly, and we’re prepared to compromise further,” Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told Politico this week after a White House meeting on the bill.

“If you’re looking for the sorry state of American energy politics distilled into one line, there it is,” writes Jonathan Hiskes at Grist. “Kerry fights harder for clean energy than just about any national politician.”

Still, if anything passes the Senate, Washington will celebrate. As Aaron Wiener explains at the Washington Independent, “For all the disappointment among environmentalists over the repeated compromises Democrats have made on climate legislation to win over moderates, some argue that a utilities-only cap would achieve most of the goals of an economy-wide carbon pricing scheme. The question now is whether Democratic leaders in the Senate can muster 60 votes for even a weakened bill to overcome a Republican filibuster.”

Our friends abroad

On an international level, our governing bodies might be doing a better job, but not by much. Inter Press Service reports that the countries at the meeting promised to scale back taxpayer subsidies of fossil fuels. Even that promise is limited, however. “Countries agree to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” but each country decides what those are,” IPS reports. “Some countries like Japan, Australia, Italy and others have already said they don’t have any.”

Johnson spoke to Kim Carstensen, who leads the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate Initiative, who compared this meeting’s report to that of the last G20 summit and found that climate issues had dropped off the radar. “There were eight references to clean energy in the final report from Pittsburgh (the last G20 Summit) and they have been completely vacuum cleaned,” he said. “That is kind of scary.”

Fight back

In situations like this, it takes massive pressure from outside to move the political apparatus forward. At AlterNet, Heetan Kalan has some ideas about how to progress—reach beyond the environmental community; enlist “doctors, nurses, public health officials and patients speaking out about the connection between consumers of coal energy and their immediate health concerns.” Kalan writes:

“After all, climate change is not solely an environmental problem — it is a human/planetary problem. If we are going to rely on a small base of environmentalists to carry us through this crisis, we are in trouble. Our spokespeople on this issue have to come from a wide spectrum of citizens and leaders.”

“Lawmakers aren’t facing much in the way of public pressure,” he writes. “The polls look encouraging, suggesting the public is inclined to back the Democratic proposals, but that support hasn’t translated into aggressive advocacy — phone calls to lawmakers’ offices, letter-writing campaigns, district meetings, sizable rallies, etc….If engaged constituents want more, Congress will have to feel considerably more heat than they are now.”

In other words, if America wants to be free of coal, oil, gas, and the energy industry, we’re going to have to fight for it.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint.

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98 comments

I can't believe we, as a country, are not demanding an end to the use of fossil and nuclear fuels! A friend just told me that Germany right now runs 15% of it's entire country's needs from alternative fuels and has complete plans to be 100% by 2050. Haven't verified the numbers but there are countries who are and have been doing! Let's vote for sanity this November and let the elected leaders, from the President on down, know that we are ready to sacrifice and do what needs to be done, to totally stop this abuse of our home, Earth.

Stop driving. You know how the US has become an uber-nannie when it comes to smoking? This is how we must learn to be about driving. Second-hand tobacco smoke is benign in comparison to second-hand traffic smoke. This is because the most carcinogenic type of smoke is the kind that contains oil particles -- from motor vehicles, not cigarettes. (Light a cigarette, then turn the ignition key in your car, and notice the difference in output as well.) Less than 20% of US adults smoke, but most drive. We actively resist taxes necessary to increase affordable public transportation, and we are unwilling to give up our "freedom" to spew cancer-causing smoke at everyone we pass.

Reducing cars in the US would reduce the demand for oil. This would reduce the super-profitable frenzy to drill, thereby reducing catastrophic "accidents" such as the Exxon-Valdez and the current Gulf spill. And need I even mention our periodic wars against oil-producing nations?

Remember the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s? Right, that's when America got serious about ending our dependence on oil -- not just foreign oil, but all oil. Virtually no progress has been made since then. There has been no social pressure against driving, no disincentives. There is less affordable public transportation than there was then.

We're running out of time. Will this generation finally do what previous generations were afraid to try?

This oil spill incompetence has gone on long enough! Please sign this petition demanding that BP pay for damages caused by the oil spill regardless of where the oil washes up onshore. Mexico and Cuba will feel the effects too!

I'm Australian & I have been watching the climate change from what is was when I was a kid & nobody listened to me then & now I feels it to late. Like I heard a few people say "we're on a train running out of control & heading for a wall".
I wonder why only BP is targeted to be boycotted, why not every oil company in the world. There was once a man named Nikola Tesla, he invented many thing used today but also a way of powering an electric car without any need for batteries or a need to plug it into a power socket. This web site tells all about Teslas life & how the Tesla's electric car drove J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, and Henry Ford CRAZY!! After Tesla died they had the FBI confiscate all this papers on his electric car so they could be billionaires.

http://www.reformation.org/nikola-tesla.html This is the site

Ban all oil companies & make them find & produce Teslas cars & use the electricity he discovered, & could be use for free without any need for fossil fuel. They have made enough money from us & have helped destroyed the planet at the same time.